


A hundred years might as well be a second (and that's all we got)

by youwillmakeitoutofthisalive



Series: Not even every sonnet Shakespeare has ever written could grasp this crazy life (this good old love), but here's an attempt [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 12:56:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18660868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youwillmakeitoutofthisalive/pseuds/youwillmakeitoutofthisalive
Summary: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimmed;And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;After all this time, how warm it feels to have you here, so near. Time, like love, never really runs out, it floats through, back and forth between our hearts. And never falters. And never yields.





	A hundred years might as well be a second (and that's all we got)

**Author's Note:**

> after the civil war, steve used to visit bucky in wakanda, which is why he didn't fall to his knees and cried for dear life when he saw bucky again in the infinity war
> 
> the war of them, though, as we very well know, is infinite indeed

(After the events of Civil war. Before the events of Infinity war.)

Bucky is so confused all the time.

The first time he ever saw him again, the scrambled parts of his brain shook, as a train may make the tracks shake. It hurt, inside of him. Somewhere even beyond his mind, past his physical body. Somewhere around that which the Buddhists call the soul.

He knew it and yet, he knew nothing at all.

They kept running into each other, and he realised it was no coincidence: he had been looking for him, that blonde man. Had been trying to take him out of the constant darkness he lived in. Why? Bucky had no clue.

And when he said it, his name, it wasn’t as though everything had suddenly fallen into place, as one would expect. It was rather as an earthquake or a detonating bomb: harsh.

It only took one word from his lips for Bucky, as he had called him, as he now calls himself, to turn into a bewildered disaster with shaky hands, the merciless soldier he had once been forgotten at the back of his head. There were millions of questions, and the only answers he had were cut-outs from a time long since gone: blue eyes staring into blue eyes, knees brushing against each other, guns, cold, colder, a small body and then a bigger one, an apartment, a kid, and then a man. It hurt, even more than being oblivious, but Bucky knew it was the truest thing he had experienced in the past 70 years. 

He didn’t know how he could have ever forgotten. He didn’t know how to not try to reach out for him.

“But I knew him” He had said, teary eyed, and he could have sworn, for this messy life of his, in that very moment, that he did know him. He knew him like he knows the sun and the pain and the needles. He knew him like he knows himself: not really, only metaphorically. Only in his bones, as an emotion that cannot be expressed nor put into words, for it would get lost in the labyrinth of his mind.

Bucky remembered Steve long before he remembered himself.

He knew him and yet, he knew nothing at all. So, he surrendered himself and let the ugly men reach past the images in his head, past the quirky feeling of affection that was coming back like the sea to the shore. He let them wipe him clean of all of it for he knew, hope is a privilege that he could not have. This hurt, it made him want to know more, it made him want to shake the blonde guy until he gave him some answers, it made him want to hold him somehow. It made him want to get out of that facility, run for the streets, find him. But Bucky knew, it didn’t matter. It couldn’t be.

Happiness is a luxury for those who still have enough life inside of them to pursue it.  
Or so he had thought.

Now, lying at Steve’s side while he sleeps, he cannot believe he ever thought it wasn’t worth it. He is sorry that he made him go through all of this, only for him. It fills him with guilt, all that this man has lost, only to win Bucky back his freedom.

But. He is so, so glad that he’s here now; a full person, more than just a shell or an empty armour. More than just a gun.

The memories come back like lightning sometimes, mostly when he’s looking deep into Steve’s eyes.  
And they struck him.

Not all the killing and all the dying he had been doing for all that time, no. That he knows all too well. That he can remember, each and every one of the screaming, begging humans he drained the life out of. He remembers all of them. That, at times, makes him wish he hadn’t remembered anything at all.  
That has nothing to do with Steve’s eyes.

When he’s looking at Steve, he recalls a better life, one that’s not made out of blood. He remembers laughing, being happy even. It’s march, and June, and the stones that they tossed around, and the smell of orange juice, and a little boy’s smile that grew into a teenager’s smirk. It’s like some sort of old, washed-off feel that remains, clinging hard at the top of his chest, when he looks at him.

There are still things he does not remember, and it makes him sad. He wants to ask him. He wants to know it all, for real.

His brain feels calmer, now, like it never did before. It’s still all broken up, wrong, but all the pieces that are left are finding their way up to their rightful places and, of course, at the centre of it all, is Steve.

When he wakes up, Bucky is staring at him in wonder. 

He can’t understand how can this possibly have happened. How he even found him again at all. How he got out. When he was in there, the days in which it felt as though what he was doing was not what he was supposed to be doing for some reason, the days he thought about escaping, it felt like the most impossible thing ever thought by men, crazier than landing on the moon or building robotic humans out of metal.

It didn’t feel as though there was a life, a world, outside those facilities’ walls. Felt crazier than finding life outside this planet, now look at him. Steve tells him about aliens and it sounds possible to him.  
And now, Bucky is here, on the outside. He has felt the wind on his face, a face that does not bare a mask anymore. The wind is soft and warmer than it was in Siberia. Everything is. The world is wide and kind and better things lie ahead of him. He knows, for he has seen worse, and there’s nothing that can ever be done to him that could compare to the anger that comes with losing yourself.

“Hey” says Steve, and sits up from the chair he was sleeping in. They’re in a medical room, in Wakanda. When T’Challa found them, Steve was carrying Bucky with his last breath, running without a fixated direction. “Come with me” the king had said.

Once inside the secure walls of this country, Shuri had stopped the bleeding and healed him with technologies he could not nearly begin to understand. He thought then of how they would have sown him up in Austria, all fast and messy. Being handled with care -being touched with love- was something completely new.

Bucky doesn’t recall much about the war, but he sure doesn’t feel like they’ve won. He’s been to the museum, so he knows Steve and him used to fight side by side. That’s all he needs to remember, really.

“Hey” Bucky replies, with half a smile, and the incredibleness of it all moves him to his core. “Hey” he repeats, in a whisper, and his eyes get wet. Feeling has always been hard, he thinks. Maddening and confusing, now more than ever.

“Hey, hey” Steve says, soothing him, and he goes on his feet to put an arm on his shoulder, like a child. He let’s go an “I know” and it makes Buck shiver. He does know. Him, of all people.

“Good god, Steve” he says, in awe, while they look at each other.

“It’s crazy” Steve agrees, and he has to sit back down from thinking too much of it. All that it’s happened.

They stay like that for a moment, in silence, with their eyes pointing in the same direction. And then, naturally, both of their looks drift back to each other. So then, they stay like that for another moment, in silence. Time doesn’t exist anymore, Bucky thinks. They have been alive for longer than most humans, and they look younger, and they look the same, and they look so different, and they look at each other. They are here, together. They can have these moments, they have earned them. They are good people, and they’ve suffered long enough.  
Both of them are way ahead of the concept of time, it’s something that no longer means anything.

Shuri comes through the door then, writing something down on a tablet, and they both break apart from each other’s eyes with a certain reluctancy. When she looks up and sees both men awake, she jumps back a little. “Oh, hey” she says “You’re up, that’s good. How do you feel?”

Bucky looks at her, frowning but with a smile still on. “Better than I have in a very long time.” 

Steve turns to him at that, repressing a wide smile. It truly makes him happy, seeing the real Buck again. It’s been so long.

The girl, as well, smiles. “That’s good to hear. I’m Shuri, by the way, T’Challa’s sister.” She says from a table were she’s doing something not Steve nor Bucky can comprehend. “You were kind of unconscious when we met. I fixed your, uhm, stump.” Even though she’s directing her visual attention towards them, she looks concentrated on what she’s doing. “As a matter of fact, I’m working on a new arm for you right now.”

Bucky looks uncomfortable at that, like he doesn’t want to think about it right this second. Doesn’t want to recall all that they took away from him, and everything they put in him, with no consent or warning. Steve is almost angry that Bucky is being talked to about those things when he just woke up, but he understands Shuri is just doing her job. “Is he allowed to go out?” he asks, firstly to change the subject, but mostly because he really wants for Buck to see just how beautiful Wakanda is.

They have been here for two days, during which Bucky slept through, and Steve took his time to speak to T’Challa, to make sure that there were no hard feelings and to hear about what was going on in the outside world. He knew he had to keep moving, since now he was a fugitive, but he wanted to be there when Buck woke up.

“Yeah, sure” Shuri answered, now looking completely invested in her work. “He’s stable, so if he feels well enough I don’t see why not.” She pressed a button, and the door opened. “If something happens, bring him back to this room and call me up, but it should be fine. No baseball, though.” She left the room laughing, and Bucky and Steve looked at each other, puzzled, and laughed as well.

“C’mon” Steve said, and in less than an hour they are strolling through the vast green garden of the Wakandan palace.

“We should keep moving,” Steve says, finally, letting it out like a sigh. He doesn’t want to leave this beautiful place, he wants to stay here with Bucky, he wants to recover all of those years, he wants to never abandon his side, ever again. “don’t forget, we’re fugitives.”

Buck laughs a little, dry. How ironic this whole thing is. How ridiculous, that after so many years, after defeating the concept of time, they can’t even get some peace.

“Yeah” he says “but where would we go? t’s not like I’ve got any other friends, u know”

Steve gives him a little push “Well, that’s because I count as many”

He shifts to look at him again, then, serious all of a sudden. “You do. You truly do. All of this, all that you have done for me, Steve. You didn’t have to. You don’t have to, even now. Jesus, you became an outlaw, you beat the shit out of your friend over there, only so a—a killer like me could—”

“Hey, don’t give me any of that crap, alright?” Steve cuts him short. He is aware that he would have done all of this and more for Bucky. “I did all of that because it was the right thing to do, you weren’t responsible for what you did. It was unfair, what happened to you. They had no right.”

“Yeah” Buck answers, and it almost pains him to hear Steve say it, that it wasn’t truly for him, that it was only what had to be done. “But you didn’t have to, you know”

“I know. I know, I wanted to” Steve stares at the long river unfolding before them. He doesn’t dare to look at Bucky when he speaks. “When I saw that you were you, I felt hopeful, you know? All this time I’ve felt misplaced here, in this era, occupying my time with those missions for SHIELD, not even knowing what most were for, with these people that speak and act so differently. It felt wrong. There was Nat, and then Sam, who were always really nice. They’re my friends now. But still, it didn’t feel right, me being here. And then,” he gasps, he can’t believe it either “When I saw you, I couldn’t believe it.” He sighs, “And when you looked right through me, like you didn’t even know me, I knew I had to go after you. That you needed me. That you deserved the relief of knowing who you were, who I was, that you weren’t alone.” He looks at Bucky then, and he finds his eyes are two crystals, filled with tears, both happy and sad, but mostly exhausted ones.

When they hug this time, it feels like something’s mending. They hug fully, completely, Steve’s arms above and Bucky’s below, the way it couldn’t be when Stevie was a lot smaller. They wrap around each other, and their chests collide. It feels as though their very hearts are hugging, like all of those years and all of the dead people and all of the loneliness and all of the heartbreak had led them to this, this infinite hug, this thread of sorrow that brought them back together.

When they part, Steve is smiling. He keeps his hand in Bucky’s elbow. They forget to speak for a second, from looking at each other. It’s just. They have missed out on so much. So many years of not seeing each other’s face. There’s so much to learn again. So many questions.

“I’m gonna have to go back, you know” Steve says, tilting his head, and when he let’s his hands fall at the side of his body Bucky feels as though another limb had been torn apart and away from him.  
“T’Challa told me Tony has Sam and the rest in a prison cell. I gotta go get them. You don’t have to come with me, but I gotta go get them.”

“Captain America” Bucky sings, looking at the floor “Has to save everyone.”

Steve looks at him as though he’s hurt and amused at the same time. “I’m not Captain America anymore. I dropped that shield ready to leave that name behind, and all that it stands for. I realised it means nothing at all, those values.” He finds Bucky’s eyes and frowns a little at himself. “The world has changed, Buck. I don’t know how to live in it anymore.”

“Tell me about it” Bucky laughs, and he’s amazed every time he realizes they’re the same.

They walk like that for a while, in silence, lost in thought. But they find that their minds end up wandering back to the same places, playing around with the same ideas. Until Bucky breaks the silence. “So, when do we leave?”

Steve seems to think for a second, “I’ll leave at first light tomorrow, maybe even before dawn.” He looks for Bucky’s eyes, “Maybe you’ll be safer here. Shuri will give you a new arm. T’Challa told me it’s ok if you want to stay, he doesn’t want to kill you anymore.” They laugh. It’s rough. “You can take some time, give your mind a break. I don’t know what they did to you, but I know it’s been Hell.” For a brief moment, he closes his eyes. “You should find some peace.”

Bucky is moved, and he knows Steve is right, but. But. He’s afraid. Of course he is. He doesn’t want to be alone, and Steve is the only certainty he has. The only solid memory. The only person that he knows, that he can trust. “I’m not sure how well I can do on my own out here” he says, finally. There’s a certain emotional intelligence he feels like he’s gained out of all of this. Now, like never before, he allows himself vulnerability. Specially in front of Steve, who has done so much for him. He wants him to know.

“You’ll be alright. I’ll come visit.” He puts a hand on his shoulder and they stop for a second. They turn to look at one another. “I won’t leave you alone, Buck. Not for long.”

And then, like a cry, he’s not able to stop it from spilling out of him, the truth he fears. The truth of his damaged self. His eyes get watered again, but he blinks it off. “What if you go away and I forget? Steve, you’re what brought me back.” It’s true. What will tie him to this reality if Steve is gone? What’s the true reason for a fresh start at all? He can’t just build a new life, do it all over again, like a baby. Re-discover the world. It’s too much.

“You won’t, Buck. Because it’s you. You’re back.” Steve faces him fully, he wants to look straight at his eyes, so that he knows. “They’re gone now, the people that did this to you. I wouldn’t let them get anywhere near you ever again. They’re gone and you’re here. You’re alive, it’s unbelievable. Can you believe this? I might not have gone through what you went, but I know how misplaced you must feel. It’s a weird thing, being alive. But think of it like this: you don’t have to do anything anymore, so you can do anything you want. You can find out what you want. Or just, do nothing, I don’t know. Enjoy not fighting, not running.”

“What about you, then? You’re still running” Bucky can’t, won’t say it, but he thinks he already knows what he wants. If he has to start a new life, if he has to do it all over again, figure out how this new crazy world, and his new clean body, and his broken desert of a mind work. If he doesn’t have to do anything, so he can do whatever he wants, he wants Steve. He wants Steve by his side to discover this new world, and as a reminder of the old one. He wants to go back to Brooklyn. He wants to go shopping at the same mini market. He wants a bad job and a bad salary and a bad meal and Steve, barefoot in the couch doodling up some funny sketch of his head as a caricature. He doesn’t want for Steve to go out, not to this reality that is trying to destroy him, nor anywhere else outside the walls of this beautiful country that they miraculously winded up in. He wants for them both to be free, at the same time.

It’s funny with them. There’s always one in need of saving, in need of help, in need of running. Their times are mismatched. Bucky wants to sow them up with the thick black thread that they once used to attach his metallic arm to his body. He doesn’t want to let Steve go ever again.

“Yeah, but I’m running in the right direction. I know. I feel it in my gut.” He smiles, and they both fall into pace again. “I will make things right, with Tony, with the government, with all of it somehow, at some point. We will figure this out. In the meantime, all I can do is go get Sam, Clint and Scott. I don’t know if they’ll come with me, or what I’ll do, but they’re there because of me. I have to get them out. And then I’ll hide until I know what to do, I guess.”

“So, hide here” Bucky says, hopeful, like a child.

Steve smiles and is silent for a few minutes. “Remember when I got arrested for fighting an officer who was being too rough to some kid who had stolen something?” After a second, Steve looks at him as if saying Sorry, I forgot. You probably don’t remember.

Bucky does, though. Truth is, his favourite memories are those Steve is in. Shining like silver in the darkness of his mind, unstained.  
“Yeah” Buck laughs then, both because it’s funny and because it feels good to remember. “Who would’ve thought that little officer-fighting punk would become the US’ most wanted?”

They both sit down after a while, to look at the sun. They don’t know how long they’ve been walking, talking, laughing, looking around and at each other. It doesn’t matter. It’s good. It’s really good. It’s the best thing that’s happened, to the both of them, in nearly 70 years.

“I’ll come back, Buck.” Steve says at some point. “You won’t be alone again.”

Bucky looks at him for so long before answering. He looks at him through tender, thankful eyes. He looks at him until the sun sets low and then lower before them.  
“You’re not alone either, you know.” Bucky says, finally.

“I know” the smile Steve gives him is a sided one, but it’s true. It’s painful as well, but what isn’t these days? “I’ve known that since I first saw you again.” He sighs eternally, let’s go all of the air inside of his lungs, both of them do. Then, “It’s why I had to go after you.” He closes his eyes, confesses. “Not only for you, because you needed me, but for myself. Cause I needed you. You were a familiar thing, someone from my past, the last human being on this planet who knew me before the serum, someone that used to understand me better than myself, annoying as that was, in this world that I didn’t even understand.” When Steve turns to look at him, he finds that Bucky’s eyes were already there to meet him. “I’m glad you’re back.”

Somewhere inside Bucky’s body, something is born. One more piece of this damaged brain falls into place. It’s the most important one. What had always been missing. He stares at Steve’s face bathed in the remaining sunlight, and he thinks of their eyes as two shores that are only parts of the same never-ending ocean.

He wonders, then, if he had always loved him. He doesn’t remember that, not really. Thinking about him that way, not consciously at least. But he does remember the feeling, the growing warmth in his heart, the smile forming at the corners of his mouth at the very sight of him. The immense worry, the necessity of knowing if he was okay at all times. And the undeniable determination that came from being so sure that he would follow him to the end of the world, and beyond.

He knows now. Maybe it’s because he’s older and time made him wiser, or because of the amazing rollercoaster that they have gone through together, or maybe it’s the fact that Steve found him, in the middle of an intricate Hell, and brought him right back. He swam through the frozen icicle of Bucky’s mind, and with a steady hand he reached for the last trail of him, and dragged him out. He only had to analyse carefully all that they had been through together. He thinks, perhaps, some part of him always knew, the same part of him that had shattered into a million pieces at the sight of Steve’s eyes the first time they saw each other again. He knew it in the raw meat of his heart, and in the aching of his broken bones. And hadn’t it been like that all along? Some unidentified force that kept the fire of his life burning, that made him able to even be alive at all, the core of him.

He remembers now: he has loved Steve ever since they first met. He just never knew. He’s only now learning how to speak again, how to put feelings into thoughts and thoughts into words and words into actions. It’s some kind of art, he believes. Some special form of masterpiece.

“I’m glad I’m back, too.” He answers, and he means it. He doesn’t want to be gone anymore, the way he did when the memories started overwhelming him like thunder. “I just wish we had more time. Different circumstances. Maybe a welcome home party instead of another war”

“Yeah, I’m sorry. They will be, soon. Don’t worry. Everything will work out” Steve, as always, looks at him through the most compassionate eyes that ever existed in this universe. “Time doesn’t really apply to us, anyway.” He says, and they laugh because it’s true and because it’s wonderful and because it’s sad. It’s sad that they have to keep waiting, after one hundred years that feel like a thousand. But they will wait for each other for as long as they have to, they both know. They would wait entire lifetimes, they would swim through every swamp and frostbitten river of this universe, travel to every dark corner of the earth, only for one of this easy, graceful moments. It’s always so easy when they’re together. 

That is, if they let themselves forget about the war that’s unleashing both behind and before them. 

It was just like that, back home. Like the empty home and the broken family and the great depression and the upcoming recruitments didn’t even exist when it was just the two of them, hanging around in the ashy night air, kicking the pavement.

After that, the hours go by unnoticed. They end up going back inside the palace when the cold gets too cold, which is a figure of speech since none of them really gets cold anymore. The long winters of this world have toughened and worn them out by now.

The next morning, Bucky wakes up in a soft bed, for the first time in so long that it almost feels wrong. He’s so used to the harshness, of it all really.

He looks up at the ceiling, and the thought at the back of his head is the same as it’s always been. It comes up without a warning. He thinks about Steve. He imagines him running away and he has to grip the sheets for a second. It makes him so goddamn mad. He thinks about running after him, about protecting him. He thinks of murdering Tony Stark with his bare own hands for causing Steve all this trouble. He thinks of killing himself. He thinks of killing the entirety of the US government, whatever’s left of SHIELD, whatever’s left of HYDRA. Anyone that’s preventing them from finally being happy. He thinks of who he will become if he goes back out into the world; a shallow, vicious, murderous shell of a man, eager for revenge. Out there, he’s a few words away from turning into a weapon again.  
And he fears. And then, he makes the choice. He doesn’t want to fight, he says to himself. He doesn’t want to have to fight, ever again, unless he chooses to, unless the cause is worth it.  
(Even so, he knows, as long as the gun is handed over by Steve, he will pull the trigger, no matter the cause).

He informs Shuri of it first, who appears to be the smartest human being alive and yet, she’s so clearly still a kid. She tries to talk him out of it. He says it’s for the best, but it makes him sad as well. T’Challa, on the other hand, who is a warrior like him, understands.

The hardest, of course, is to let Steve know. He seems puzzled at first, but it only takes a second for him to realise what it would mean for Bucky to go back into the cryofreeze. He tries to talk him out of it, as Buck knew he would. But there’s nothing he can say that would make him change his mind.  
It’s not like Bucky wants to do this, but he knows he has to. He doesn’t want to be fragile and dangerous at the same time no more.

“You sure about this?” Steve asks, for the billionth time, and stares at him. His eyes are filled with the sadness of ages. He aches for this life, Buck knows. He imagines how hard it must have been for a good man like him, to come back from the death and find the universe in such a state of chaos.

“I can’t trust my own mind” Bucky smiles when he looks up at Steve for he knows it will be alright. It may be days, but it may be months or years. However long, it doesn’t matter. It took a long road to get here. In comparison to how long they have waited, this will feel short as a snap. “So, until they figure out how to get this stuff out of my head I think going back under is the best thing.” Steve nods at this, head low, eyes to the floor. Mentally, he understands. But somewhere down to the flesh and bone of his heart, he disagrees. He trusts Bucky. He knows he wasn’t himself when he did what he did. He believes that his good intentions and his kind self are stronger than the spell he was casted. But then again, Steve knows nothing of science or brainwashing. He only knows people. 

“For everybody.” Bucky adds, and Steve wants to yell at that. He can see through Bucky’s words, and he knows what he means; that this will be the best for him.

“Shuri said that she was close to, you know” Steve made a gesture then looked away. He didn’t want to let the tears flood his eyes. “figuring out how to completely— fix your brain? Not--” Steve adds, before Bucky has the chance to answer “that it’s broken”

Bucky laughs a little at him, so polite and soft. Steve laughs at himself as well, and when they finally look into each other’s eyes, it’s like they suddenly get all of the feelings that none of them is resourceful enough to understand, and wordlessly say everything they can’t fully get out of their mouths and heads on their own.

When the frozen matter takes hold of him, and he feels his body go cryogenic before his head does, the last thing he thinks of is the way Steve’s face crumbled when he fell from the train into the ice.

Steve, at the other side of the glass, watches him go with a clenched fist and a pounding heart, same way he did back then, screaming out his name, only it comes out as a whisper.

Bucky speaks then, into the void, when he can no longer be heard “Wait for me” he asks, and it’s nothing but a prayer.

***

When Steve came back to Wakanda, a month after Bucky had gone cryogenic again, Sam was standing right behind him.

The first thing he did, after warmly greeting T’Challa, was asking if Buck was up again. Steve was impatient, fidgeting. Yes, Sam and him did need somewhere to hide until they found Nat. But it was no coincidence that they had gone back to Wakanda. The only way he had of finding out about Bucky was to go, since they couldn’t call or reach him while he was on the run.

The king, as always, was formal and yet friendly when he informed Steve that Bucky was still under. There had always been something about him that made Steve trust him, even when they were in opposite sides. He was a good fella, a great one even.

“Unfortunately, he is not back with us yet. But my sister thinks she’s close to finding the medical solution for his… damaged brain. Soon enough, we hope to wake him up.” T’Challa said all of this smiling, but Steve didn’t seem pleased with his answer. The hope in his heart was fleeting: even if he wanted to, he knew they couldn’t stay longer than three days, they didn’t want to compromise Wakanda and they had to stay on the move.

Later that day, Steve went for a walk. The city was as beautiful as ever, but it wasn’t the same, walking around it without Bucky.

Bucky, he thought, and sighed. He sighed from the very depths of him, up to his throat. He chocked on the feeling of him. He had avoided thinking of it; he avoided thinking of it as he travelled alone for miles, as he infiltrated in the cells to get his friends out, as he hugged them, as Sam and him hid back at Clint’s, as they sent Scott home, as Sam and him ran and walked and drove and travelled to stay safe, as they looked for Natasha. He tried not to think of Bucky as his hand met a pencil again, for the first time since he came out of the ice, and the only thing his knuckles knew how to trace was his face, his face not as he remembered it, but with the slight twists that it had gained, the little wrinkles, the pronounced eyeshadows, the angry frown that went softer when Steve made him laugh.

“How did this happen, Buck?” He let go, in a broken whisper, speaking to no one in particular. How did he die, and then came back to life? How could it be that he shared his life experience? Steve had been missing his past so much since he woke up and then, there was Bucky, straight from the 40s, grin hidden under all that anger, just like him, just as confused, just as homesick. How could this ever be? Theirs wasn’t a fairy-tale. It was a ghost story. It’s the kind of thing that only ever happens in the movies.

And yet, Buck had had it so much worse than Steve. It pained him, to think of all of the things that he had probably seen, or done. All of the things that’d been done to him. It didn’t scare him, of course. He knew it hadn’t been him. But it made him furious, like he had been furious the day he died, when he promised he would hunt down every HYDRA officer that ever existed, only so that Buck’s memory could rest. It made him so furious he had wanted to burn the life out of Tony just for not understanding. It made him so furious and yet, when he saw Bucky smile again, all of the anger was gone. All of it. Every last bit.

“Steve” said Sam, in the dark, taking him off his thoughts. “What’s up, man?” he wondered, probably because Steve looked like he had just taken a knife to the gut.

“Nothing, just—” he had decided, some time ago, that he wouldn’t lie to his friends. Not now, not ever. Nat, Sam and Clint, he knew he could trust the three of them, so he owed them his honesty, it was all that he had left. “I just wanted to see him”

Sam made a line with his mouth. He understood. “I know, but he hasn’t gone anywhere. You’ll see him soon.” He put a hand in his friend’s shoulder “C’mon, let’s get inside”

They did go inside. They spent only two days in Wakanda, and then they were on their way. The day they hit the road, Steve stopped by the room where they had Bucky’s body. It was hard for him. He stood close to the glass and analysed what he could see of him. He didn’t look alive, so Steve had to look away. “I’ll wait for you, Buck” he said, eyes closed and fists clenched. “Would you wait for me?”

***

When Bucky woke up, a month after Steve stopped by Wakanda, he was surprised to find that the world hadn’t changed. A hundred years had not passed. He was still alive.

“Hey there” Shuri had said from her desk “You sleep like the dead, dude”

Bucky laughed then, loud and happy and truthful, and it made the girl cheerful. She felt some sort of attachment to this man, a certain special compassion for the life he had lived. 

“Hey” said Bucky, and after a second he was not so happy anymore. “Why did you wake me up?”

“Because I did it. I solved the puzzle of your brain, how to recover the cells that they burned, how to prevent it from happening again. Now we can clean you up of all that stuff. You ready?” Shuri said this in a high tone, excited. She was really proud of herself, for using this ability of understanding and creating that she had to help others. This man will have a better life now, thanks to her. It filled her with pride, to be able to gift that to a person.

“Jesus, I don’t know that I am,” blurted Bucky with a smile, incredulous, eyes wide “But let’s get to it. I want all of this out of me as soon as I can”

So, they got to it. It was a long month of therapy. Shuri had programmed sessions during which she worked on Bucky’s insides.

“I can fix up your body, but I can’t heal the sadness in your heart, you know?” she said one day before they started that day’s session. They had become pretty close.

Bucky looked at her and pretended he didn’t understand. 

“You should let us call him” added the girl who, as most teenagers, didn’t measure her words too much before saying them. It was fine by Buck, though. He was like that too, even as an adult: reckless and true, as much as he could.

“He will come, or he won’t. But we won’t bother him” He said, and his jaw clenched “He has gone through enough trouble for me already”

“He must’ve thought you were worth it, don’t you think?” Answered Shuri, after considering this for a moment. “C’mon, sit down” She indicated him.

And just like that, with some evolved tech and the glorious mind of a woman, Bucky’s brain had been purified. He could feel it, even though nothing had changed: he hadn’t forgotten, he still had done everything he did, but he could feel it anyways, the change. Clean. As your body feels clean after running a long bath. As your mind feel rested after a good night sleep. As your heart feels at ease after doing something you love. He was no longer dangerous, ferocious. There was no monster, no beast inside of him. No shots to be faired, and no one to call them either.

He was nothing but a white canvas now. He had nothing else in this world, other than gratefulness and affection for the people of Wakanda, and the bright faint light of his love for Steve.

He decided to go around then, get to know the frontiers, discover the countryside. He had all the time in the world, and he used it to marvel himself with the beauty around him. He would go to the palace every evening for a month to tell Shuri and T’Challa about the things he had seen, and to ask where he should go next. Wakanda was larger than it seemed.

The day Steve came back, Bucky had been to the mountains. He came back excited because he had seen some crazy animal running through the grass, and he had followed it for hours, only to end up finding it was coming back to its family. When he burst into the dining room, ready to tell Shuri all about his day, there he was, standing in dirty gear, Natasha and Sam at his sides. It overtook Bucky so hard he had to give a step back. A rush of blood to the head.

“Steve” he said, because there was no other word in the world he could have possibly uttered.

And Steve turned, wide eyed, smiling swiftly, astonished as well, and replied “Buck”

He wanted to run to him and embrace him. He wanted to tackle him to the ground. He wanted to never let him out of his sight, ever again. But instead, he went calmly up to him, and gave him a soft clutch, quick, though he closed his eyes all through it. He nodded at Natasha, and gave Sam some sort of face that meant something along the lines of “Hey”, which he returned just as affectively.

Things happened after that; they all had dinner together, Sam said something funny and everyone laughed, they asked him how he was feeling, Nat apologized to T’Challa for turning on him during the civil war they had been through, T’Challa, of course, said it was fine, that she had been right. Shuri told them about his therapy, and explained what she did in terms that nobody understood. They ate a delicious dessert, probably. Bucky doesn’t even know. Things happened but he couldn’t, for the life of him, pay attention to any of them. He doesn’t know what happened in that dinner at all, actually. After Steve said “Buck” he didn’t get anything else. All that he wanted was to be alone with Steve. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the rest of them. He loved Shuri and T’Challa, and he thought he was really alike to Natasha, so he appreciated her. Sam hated his guts, but in a funny way, so it was ok too. But it didn’t matter. He had thought he wouldn’t be seeing Steve again for a very long time, or even at all. He thought he wouldn’t come back, and there he was. There he was, a blessing. There he was, the vision of him completely new to the eye and yet so familiar. He’s always been good at taking him by surprise, he thinks. That little fucker.

T’Challa and Nat are the last ones to leave the table. “Goodnight” she says, and smiles at Bucky.

“I’ll take you to your room” adds T’Challa, and smiles at Steve. 

When they both leave the room, Bucky feels as though a huge weight has been lifted from his shoulders. He turns to look at Steve and he can’t help but smiling. Steve glimpses, and smiles back.

“Hey there” he says, brightly.

“How are you feeling?” is what he answers, worried by his wellbeing above all.

“Really well, surprisingly” says Bucky “What have you been up to?”

Steve laughs. “What, the past 4 months, or the past 70 years?”

Bucky laughs as well “Both, actually. Both” he looks down at his feet and, when he lifts his face, Steve’s eyes are there, shining and eternal “I would like to know everything”

So, Steve tells him. He tells him everything. He tells him about the avengers, about New York, about Sokovia. He tells him about this world, and all the things he has learned about it, and all that he has yet to learn. And Bucky listens to every word, amazed. And the only thing he can think of is how alone Steve must have felt.

“Men, I still haven’t been to the movies, you know” Bucky confesses at some point “they must be so different now”

“You haven’t—Oh my, Buck, you’re gonna flip” Steve laughs at him in such a tender way “I have to show you, it’s crazy; the things they can do. Not only the movies but the music and the technology, it will blow your mind”

“I’ve had my mind blown enough, I think” and he laughs dry.  
Silence falls between them, guilt written all over Steve’s face, until Bucky answers so softly that he’s not sure Steve even heard him until he smiles back at him, dashingly. “Could you?”

“Huh?”

“Could you show me?” Bucky almost begs.

Steve grins at him then, so wide, so lovingly, and says “Of course, buddy. I’m still trying to figure it out myself” there’s a silence hanging in the air around them, profound like the night itself, and they let it be, just for a split second that lasts forever. They feel it upon them, “We’ll discover it all together, how’s that sound?”

And it sounded pretty goddamn swell, Bucky thought. Pretty goddamn swell.

From that day on, Steve came to Wakanda once or twice a month. Bucky never knew exactly when he would arrive, but he could feel it in his bones when he was near. Every time he would bring a great invention from the world with him, or some amazing cultural work of art, so that him and Bucky could figure it out together: a song, an album, a book, a computer, a desktop app, an online game. Once, they even created a facebook account under a false name and looked random people up.

It was good. Damn good. And it almost made it all worth it, Bucky often thought. All of the electricity going through his braincells, all the pain, all of those years of his body not belonging to him. All of it, it was a portal, it was what had to happen, just to bring him here, to this moment in time, with Steve.

That is, of course, until something bad happened, as bad things often do. One year ended, and the other began. They celebrated the New Year and it was fantastic. They sang and they drank and they watched as the starts shone brighter than ever. First new year together in almost 100 years.

But then, it was over. And when February passed, Steve didn’t come. 

A month, and then two. No news from him. No news from anyone. Only silence and a promise and two hearts that ached from being so far apart.

***

When the first month flied by, Bucky was disappointed. Sad, even. But he cheered himself by thinking that perhaps Steve was severing the last ties before being able to walk the earth freely again.

He started getting worried when the second month passed, and neither T’Challa nor Nakia, who was outside in the world, had any news about him, or Natasha, or the Falcon.

When he finally came back, Bucky’s face was filled with a warm kind of happiness: his heart always seemed to beat so hard at the sight of Steve, yet it was a kind pace.

“How’ve you been, Buck?” Steve had asked, and the air of battle stung sharp around them.

Heavy and out of it right now, dazzled at the sight of Steve, angry in the face of another fight, he had said “Not bad for the end of the world”. And of course it wasn’t bad. Not that bad. After all, Steve was there. Steve was there and that was enough. As far as Bucky was concerned, at least, that was always enough.

**Author's Note:**

> this is something i wrote a while ago, after watching infinity war. i needed something light and gay to forget about the lousy brohug the russos gave us. i decided to post it now because i don't want for it to lay dead and forgotten in my computer for life. 
> 
> as always, i choose to believe fanfiction is more canon than canon will ever be. after watching endgame, i encourage you all to do the same. <3


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